Friday randomness

No connection to the post. Just thought you could use the reminder that Demond Washington will be returning kicks all season this year instead of just the last few games. Yeah, I'm pumped too.

Sorry, there’s nothing too special on tap for WBE today. There’s a couple of quality posts on the horizon that will take time and effort, but it’s a Friday, and I’m still just coming down from the high of watching my Dutch beat Brazil this a.m., so you’re getting a lazy smattering of links instead. Apologies, but I’ll make it up next week. Enjoy:

— No real major developments on the ‘krootin’ front this week, but there’s several profiles out there of players who Auburn is seriously in the mix for: Xzavier Dickson (though the Tide lead), Kevin McReynolds (who has Auburn in a “soft top 12”), Ray Drew. Drew characterized Auburn’s “family” focus as a kind of sales pitch in a recent discussion about Georgia’s “Dream Team” scheme, but he does clarify here that Chizik and Co. mean what they say:

Is Auburn a player for his services? “I like Auburn. Coach Rock is the man. He’s a Lombardi Winner, and if you want to be great, you gotta be coached by coaches who were great. They’ve got the whole indoor facility coming, and they have a lot of plans in the works with expansion and stuff. Family is a word that’s overused in college football, but Auburn shows it, and you can tell that they really mean it.”

Another development to keep an eye on is the surge from Homewood running back Ameer Abdullah, who’s put together a tremendous month of camp performances and speaks to Auburn Eagle here. It sounds as if Abdullah, a longtime Auburn fan, would commit on the spot if offered–which may be why Chizik and Co. haven’t just yet. Since offering would be tantamount to immediately putting Abdullah on the roster, they’ll have to absolutely sure his spot wouldn’t be better used on a different RB or CB … so Abdullah may have to wait.

— As a part-time Atlanta Hawks fan, I can’t even describe to you how mind-blowingly stupid management’s decision to offer Joe Johnson a maximum $119 million dollar contract is … although seeing one prominent NBA blogger call it “the worst contract we’ve ever seen” starts to cover it. There are times when the fans are wrong and coaches/management are right, but as Bob Bradley and now the Hawks are proving, there’s also a ton of times when the wisdom of crowds is far, far more accurate. Sigh.

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TnT, that was De Jong who broke Holden’s ankle, yeah, and there were a couple of dives here and there in that match. But it’s a family thing for me–grandparents, great-uncles, etc. are Dutch. They’ve been my second team as long as I’ve followed soccer. This is pretty much my least favorite iteration of the Dutch–Robben was disgraceful the other day with his diving and faking, De Jong’s a thug, they don’t have the snap in their attack they had at Euros just two years ago–but they’re still the Netherlands.